How to make the most of your AncestryDNA matches: Part 5 – DNA Painter’s “What are the Odds” and how to link unknown matches to your tree

In this installment we’re going to walk through a key tool to help narrow down where to research when you have AncestryDNA tests that match your family, but despite your research you’re not sure where they match. DNA Painter has a great tool called What are The Odds that gives us the probability of where these unmatched lines link up with our own.

We’re using a real set of unknown matches for this example. Emma Kupps (1879-1953) is a one of our favorite ancestors. She was born and raised the various logging communities that sprang up in North Central Wisconsin in the late 1800’s, but her family settled in Antigo where she graduated from Antigo High School. Within a few years she would married a logger Daniel Leonard (1868-1924), who would soon become Antigo’s Fire Chief, and years later be elected Sheriff of Langlade Coounty, Wisconsin. During his term Dan became ill with cancer, and succumbed with a significant portion of this term remaining. The governor of Wisconsin appointed Emma to the position of Sheriff to complete her late husband’s term, and she became the first woman in Wisconsin to hold the office. (Langlade Co. Historical Society)

DNA Painter has greatly narrowed down where we’re targeting our on-going research to finally break down this brick wall.

But, to family historians, she’s also near the end of a line that is a classic brick wall. Her father died young, and there’s nothing but a couple of records that indicate only the names of his parents. Plus, they are the only lines in our family that come from Bohemia, so it has the combined brick walls of classic genealogy and DNA results.

We’ve identified a group of AncestryDNA matches that have strong Bohemian roots and match descendants of Emma. We used Michael’s Great Uncle as our target DNA match, since he’s the oldest generation tested on that line, and we built a master tree that links as many of the unknown DNA matches as we could. We ended up with 8 AncestryDNA matches that we could link together in a cluster.

The cluster all share Jacob Haasl and Dorothy (Johannek) Haasl as their MCRA, but we haven’t been able to build a link between Great Uncle Leonard and the Haasl’s. So, we’re going to turn to DNApainter’s “What are the Odds” tool, to help identify where we’re most likely linked to the cluster.

When you open “What Are the Odds?”, it will present a box for the most recent common ancestors (MCRA). The options are to “Edit Names”, “Add Child”, or “Add Parent”. In this case, we’re going to edit the name, and add the cluster’s MCRA, Joseph and Dorothea Haasl. When we enter that information, we’re presented with the same 3 choices, but this time we’re going to start building a line to one of the DNA matches but selecting “Add Child” and entering the name of the child that makes up the first step to our DNA match. At first we were surprised how quickly we built out a tree, but it’s because we’re not entering all the data we’d need for a regular tree, just the names!

The first line of our unknown DNA matches, with the amount of cM they match us entered

When we reached a DNA match we entered the cM value that matches our known DNA test. We repeated this step for as many matches as we’ve identified. This works well with a single match, but better with more. In our case we identified 8 matches, so we’re built them all out. Now we’ll really see the power of this tool.

All 8 of the AncestryDNA matches mapped out, with amount of matching cM

Now that we’ve entered what’s known, it’s time to start mapping out our guesses. In fact, the entire purpose of this tool is to compare the likelihood of at least 2 hypotheses matching the entered cM, and from those likelihoods we can focus on where it’s most likely we all share a most MCRA.

The most likely connection for Jacob and Mary Keips’ line is her parents. We don’t know her maiden name, or birth date, but if we guess that she was born in 1820-1825 it’s reasonable to guess she is a sibling of either Jacob Haasl or Dorothy (Johannek) Haasl, so let’s build that out as option 1. We’ll add an “Unknown 3xGGP” to Joseph and Dorothy, and add a child called Jacob/Mary (because it could be either!). From there we’ll build down to the Great Uncle that is the known DNA match, and select “Use as Hypothesis”.

All 8 matches, and a hypothetical link to our known DNA match

It shows us a probability of “1” because DNA painter doesn’t show you raw percentages, it shows you comparative probability of one match vs. another. For example, if you enter two hypotheses and one returns “1” and the other returns “2”, we’ll know the second one is twice as likely as the first. In this case, we have no other hypotheses entered, so it shows just a 1.

Given the cM match, it’s most likely that we match the cluster with Great Uncle Leonard’s 3x to 5x GGP’s, so we built out the same line as above, but this time with one more unknown ancestor above Jacob/Dorothy Keips, which would then make Uncle’s MCRA a 4xGGP.

When we built that out, and selected the second “Great Uncle Leonard” as a hypothetical, it soared to a whopping score of “1174” vs. the first “Great Uncle Leonard!! Given that we have 1174 for one possible link and 1 for the other, DNA painter just told us that while not impossible, we’re looking for a 4xGGP as our MCRA, not 3xGGP. Not great news, since now we have to go at least two more generations back, and to build this match back further we’re going to have to dig deep into 18th Century European genealogical records. That’s not our strong suit. But, at least now we have a clear picture of where we’re looking to link these groups.

It’s looking 1174 time more likely that our MCRA is a 4xGGP than a 3xGGP!

Since the range of likely Great Grandparents is 3x-5x, we then built this hypothetical out to our match’s 5xGGP, and we see the same score of 1174 from a hypothetical 5xGGP. That means it’s equally likely that our link to this cluster of match is through our Great Uncle Leonard’s 4xGGP or this 5xGGP, but it’s almost certainly NOT through his 3xGGP.

While in some ways this is disappointing, and we’d hoped to come through with a match, this is actually a huge piece of this brickwall puzzle. When we started the work on this DNA cluster we knew that John Keips/Kupps had migrated from Bohemia and, at the time of his death, his wife thought his father was Jacob D. Kupps when she filled out her husband’s death certificate. From their marriage certificate we knew John’s mother, and Jacob’s wife, was Mary. We also knew we had a large cluster of DNA matches who came from the area of Bohemia.

Just by going through that cluster, building out a central tree that links them all, we found a great lead that likely shows John’s arrival information, along with approximate birth years for Jacob, Mary, and John…as well as John’s previously unknown siblings who seem to have a long history together in the US, and left many records. That means instead of having exhausted all the on-site research we could do on the John’s line, we now have a large number of leads to follow and see if we can push back another generation from both Jacob and Mary. We now know enough to start targeting death certificates for both, which may contain critical names, as well as 6 more marriage/death certificates to look for Mary’s maiden name, as well pieces of evidence that link our Jacob to the arrival Jacob. And, DNA Painter has greatly narrowed down where we’re targeting our on-going research to finally break down this brick wall.

We also have about 20 trees integrated into the master tree, and all of their owners are likely working towards the same goal as we are. As they do their research, and new DNA matches are added to the mix over the years, it’s likely one of us is going to have that piece of the puzzle we’re missing, and finally put it all together.

2 thoughts on “How to make the most of your AncestryDNA matches: Part 5 – DNA Painter’s “What are the Odds” and how to link unknown matches to your tree”

This post contains appreciable amounts of DNA match help for the layperson. I came in at part five; now I’m eager to go back and begin from Part 1! Thanks for the thoughtful way you mapped this all out!